


Cooking Duty

by VelkynKarma



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Silly shenanigans, Zuko does his best, cross-post from livejournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25229263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelkynKarma/pseuds/VelkynKarma
Summary: Now that Zuko is officially part of the group, he’s expected to help with certain chores...whether or not he knows how to actually do them. Cross-posted from Livejournal. “Remastered” edition.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 209





	Cooking Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from my Livejournal account, this fic was originally posted back in October 2011 as part of a prompt request challenge I did. Sadly as the account is now dead, I no longer remember what the prompt specifically was, or who requested it. But since I’m transitioning my fics to AO3 anyway, I figured I’d include this one for fun.
> 
> This is a 'remastered' edition, so it's been cleaned up and is slightly different than the original, if you read it back in the day.

It was the day after the fiasco with the Southern Raiders. 

Katara still felt a little drained from the ordeal. After years of living with that hurt and that anger, simmering below the surface, it was strange to have it finally resolved. And yet, her sleep that night had been unexpectedly restful, like some huge weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders.

Or maybe more than one weight, she thought, since she had also forgiven Zuko yesterday too. The day had felt much fresher and more lighthearted than any other day had since he joined, and she suspected it was largely because the anger and distrust she’d felt towards him was gone. Zuko had been enthusiastically welcomed into the group by all of them now, and Katara was willing to admit he’d earned his place there.

Of course, being fully accepted meant he was going to be subjected to other duties as well. And since she was willing to actually assign him serious tasks now that she trusted him, she was going to make sure he did his part around their camp. 

Not that he knew what he was in for. At least, not yet.

“Zuko!” she called across the courtyard, about halfway through the afternoon. Their new resident firebender was currently gathered with the rest of the group in the broken-down summer home of their worst enemy, listening to one of Sokka’s lame jokes with a bemused expression on his face. She had to admit, he looked much more approachable when he was relaxed, and that typical scowl he’d had in the past was erased from his features. 

Zuko looked up in confusion, and the rest of the group—especially Sokka and Aang—cringed in anticipation. They knew what was coming next. Katara inwardly rolled her eyes at them, and said cooly, “You’re on cooking duty with me tonight, Zuko. Meet me over at the supplies.”

“I am?” the fire prince asked, bewildered. “I don’t remember being assigned to—”

Sokka slapped a hand over his mouth hastily and hissed, “Just do it, don’t argue! Once you’re in her sights, you can’t ever escape.” Aang nodded silently in agreement, eyes wide. 

Her brother’s annoyingly over-dramatic proclamations aside, Katara couldn’t help but snicker a little at the nervous confusion on Zuko’s face. Cooking for a lot of people could be tedious and time consuming. Sokka lacked the patience for anything more extensive than roasting meat over a fire, and Aang’s attention span wasn’t great when it came to bigger meals. For them, it was an exercise in boredom and frustration. But they made it _sound_ a lot worse, like some form of torture or punishment, and clearly Zuko had no idea what he was in for.

Still, Zuko was always eager to help out with even the most menial tasks in the group, since before Katara had trusted him enough to assign him some. It was like he was actively _looking_ for some sort of penance to pay. It was easy to guilt him into almost any kind of work around the camp, and joining her for dinner preparations was no exception. 

Sure enough, he came trotting over to meet her by Appa and their supplies just a few moments later. He practically radiated a strange combination of readiness and wariness, like an eager to please polar-bear pup that wasn’t quite sure of its training yet. 

Just a few months ago, Katara _never_ would have thought the angry, scowling prince of the Fire Nation that had chased them all over the world with dogged determination could be so endearingly _awkward._ It was almost hard to imagine that person was the same one with them now. But Katara was starting to realize the person who had chased them everywhere had worn a mask of pride and fury, and _this_ Zuko was the real one, hiding below the surface.

It had taken her a while to see past that mask, and to understand the real Zuko _wasn’t_ a facade. But now that she could see him for what he was, she decided she liked this version of him much better than the mask. _This_ Zuko was well on his way to being as close a friend as the rest of the team.

“This’ll be great,” she said, as she shuffled through their packs, looking for her cooking supplies. She handed off a few of the items to Zuko, who took them obediently, blinking in confusion. “I never get any help cooking these days, and we have way more mouths to feed than before when it was just my brother and Aang. I used to rope Sokka into helping me, but he always tries to put meat in everything, so Aang had nothing to eat. And Aang is...well I mean, it’s sweet that he’s a vegetarian, I guess. But those monks must have lived such a simple lifestyle, because anything Aang suggests is always so... _bland._ And there’s usually not enough, either. And Toph is just too _unsanitary_ to be let near a cooking pot.”

“I heard that!” the earthbender shouted across the courtyard. Both Katara and Zuko yelped in surprise as the earth shifted unnaturally to the left beneath them, sending them both crashing to the ground. The cooking utensils that Zuko had collected in his arms went flying, scattering around them to the earth with a series of clangs and thuds. 

“What was that for?” Zuko yelled back with a groan, after a painful pause. _“I_ didn’t do anything!”

“My bad, hot stuff,” came the entirely uncaring reply, and Zuko was abruptly jolted to his feet by a rapidly appearing and vanishing pillar of dirt. He muttered something under his breath and rubbed his back with a wince, before offering Katara his hand. She took it gratefully and pulled herself up.

“I’ll help if I can,” Zuko said, returning to the conversation, “But I don’t know how much use I’ll even be.” He still wore a puzzled expression, like he wasn’t sure how he fit into the whole scenario.

“That’s just it,” Katara said. “When we were undercover in the Fire Nation before, I really enjoyed a lot of the recipes whenever we ate in the towns. I bought a lot of the spices and things with some of our food money, but I’m not really sure how to use them yet. But since _you’re_ from the Fire Nation and grew up with this stuff, we can try to make dinner a little more interesting tonight! I bet the others’ll love it. And if it gets Sokka to stop complaining about having plain rice every day, _I’ll_ be happy too.” 

She smiled at him, enthusiastic. Although cooking _was_ a chore, and a necessary one to keep their group healthy and fighting fit, it was always one of the chores she’d enjoyed the most. Cooking had been one of the things she’d inherited from her mother, and she had fond memories of those lessons. Finding ways to make their food supplies last and their meals taste interesting was a challenge, but it was a challenge she enjoyed. And she always liked learning new ways to do it, when she could.

Zuko stared at her like she’d grown a second head that had started spouting gibberish. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, which she attributed to being a guy, because she knew she was making perfect sense. Sokka had always claimed that cooking was ‘just unmanly,’ and she had a strange feeling right about now that Zuko probably agreed. 

But she pushed on anyway. Now that he was one of them, he was not getting out of this assignment, and she was going to get some help putting dinner on the table for once. “So,” she concluded, “I’ll let you take the helm as it were on dinner tonight, since you probably know more about the Fire Nation recipes than I do. But make sure you teach me as we go, because I want to remember how to make it in the future.”

“Um—”

“Oh,” Katara said, snapping her fingers, “and keep in mind that there has to be something without meat in it for Aang since he’s a vegetarian. And it should be relatively easy to eat with your hands or from a bowl, since Toph _refuses_ to use any sort of utensil.”

She glared in Toph’s direction, ignoring Zuko’s confused stare. Thankfully, another very local earthquake did not occur this time. 

“And if you have anything that’s _really_ spicy, just be careful, because Sokka seems to have this idiotic tendency to try things that are too hot when he knows he can’t handle them,” she instructed. “Oh! And while you’re teaching me, don’t forget to mention if there are any substitutes you can use instead. I’d love to bring some of these recipes back home, but you definitely can’t find some of the things we ate here at the South Pole—”

Zuko looked dazed at the onslaught of information, mouth slightly agape, a bit like a cornered rabbit-mouse. She didn’t want to scare off the only person left who could help her with dinner, so she said more calmly, “Well, we can talk about all that stuff while we make it. So, what do you know how to make?”

“Tea,” he answered promptly. 

She waited for him to list off the rest of the Fire Nation cuisine he had to offer, excited about the possibilities. But he didn’t say anything further, just stared at her with his arms crossed in front of his chest. His expression was resigned, suggesting he’d rather be anywhere but there, but felt obligated to stay out of some sense of...well, probably honor, considering who she was dealing with. 

“That’s...that’s it?” She finally prompted, crestfallen.

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “But it’s really good tea. I mean, Uncle taught me how to make it. And I had a lot of practice.” He wrinkled his nose, and said with traces of irritation and exhaustion, “A _lot_ of practice.”

“But you can’t live on just _tea,_ ” Katara said, exasperated. “Come on, you’re a major representative of the Fire Nation—how can you not know how to cook anything from your _own country!_ ”

“I’m a _prince,_ Katara,” he said, equally exasperated. “Or I used to be, anyway. I never made anything myself. We had dozens of cooks in the palace to bring us whatever we wanted at any time of day or night. And when I was chasing you around on my ship, I _still_ had a cook to take care of that for me. Even for an exiled prince, it would still be considered an unforgivable disgrace to deny me basic luxuries like that.”

“What about after that?” Katara said, and was irritated to find that her voice was unusually whiny. “When you were just with your uncle in the Earth Kingdom? You definitely didn’t have a cook with you then!”

“No,” Zuko agreed, and said with annoying logic, “But we were in the Earth Kingdom, so we made Earth Kingdom _food._ Even if Uncle knows how to make Fire Nation foods, there’s no way we could have bought some of the exotic spices we use here.”

Katara groaned. And she’d been looking forward to learning something too! “Well...fine then. I guess we’ll just have to make rice again. Sokka had better not complain.”

Zuko looked a little guilty. “Er, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, uh, make you mad or anything.” He paused, and then said almost hesitantly, “I could, uh...well I mean, I still know what the foods _are,_ just not how they’re made, if that helps...”

Katara considered. “I still have those spices. And I bet we could find some other things to work with at the market, or out hunting, as long as we’re careful. Experimenting _does_ sound sort of fun, especially with somebody who knows what the end result is supposed to be like...”

Zuko gulped, and suddenly looked very uncomfortable about volunteering.

* * *

An hour later found Katara crouched down awkwardly near her pathetic attempt at a cooking fire, glaring at it in frustration as it receded to mere embers beneath her largest cooking pot. 

The fuel on Ember Island certainly lived up to its name, she thought with a grimace. Now the flames wouldn’t be ready by the time Zuko got back from the market. She had sent him to the closest village to procure whatever food supplies he’d deemed most familiar for their experimentations an hour ago, figuring she’d have plenty of time to prepare before he returned. It was remarkable, and a little sad, how easily the prince of his own nation could go unnoticed in town as long as he wore a hood.

But luck was not on her side. “Light already!” she growled at the little embers in frustration. They didn’t listen. Nor did they react when she breathed on them carefully to try and get them to ignite once more, a tried-and-true method that nevertheless seemed to be failing her today. 

“What are you _doing?_ ” Zuko asked.

Katara jumped back from the embers in surprise, all too aware of how silly she looked crouching in front of what passed for her fire while talking to it. Embarrassed, she glanced up at the prince, who stared back with a bemused expression. He set down a basket of goods from the market and glanced down at her attempts to start a cooking fire, before giving her a pointed look.

“I can’t light it!” She said in frustration. “The stuff on this island doesn’t burn well at _all._ I’ve been trying since you left, but nothing seems to catch, and now I’ve wasted a whole hour that could’ve been used to get it to the proper temperature—um, are you okay?”

Zuko’s shoulders were shaking, and one hand was pressed to his face. For a moment she thought maybe he was having some sort of seizure, or he’d been hurt at the market, or something. But seconds later she realized the muffled, choking noise wasn’t coughing at all—Zuko was _laughing._ At _her!_

“Stop that!” she growled at him. “I don’t see why this is so funny—”

He stopped trying to muffle his chuckling, and seemed to find her frustration all the more funny. She was seriously considering an ice-water shower as a remedy, when he looked at her and said, still chuckling, “Why didn’t you just _ask_ me before I left?”

“What are you.... _ooooh._ ” Well, now didn’t she just feel stupid. She’d been lecturing him about being a part of the Fire Nation all this time, and had completely forgotten that the ‘fire’ part was entirely literal in his case. “I didn’t—that is—”

He still looked genuinely amused, but said, “Never mind. How hot do you need it? There’s no need to wait an hour.” He was still chuckling at what was probably, to him, a ridiculous notion of _waiting_ for one’s fire to be good and proper for cooking. Lousy firebender. 

“Um...it needs to be solid and pretty strong. Not too intense though, we don’t want to burn everything, just heat it steadily, enough so that—”

“Katara,” he said dryly, “I might not know a lot about cooking, but I’m _pretty_ sure I know a thing or two about fire. I got it.”

Which counted as the second time she felt stupid in as many minutes, lecturing a firebender about, well, _fire._ Oh, he was going to pay for that later.

But true to his word, he did get a very nice little blaze going with a quick wave of his hand, instantly at the exact temperature and strength she needed. She could tell he was sustaining it at that temperature too, based on the occasional quick hand movements he made. Well, okay—so maybe having a firebender on call _was_ handy sometimes.

With step one out of the way, she dug through his basket of Fire Nation foods and questioned him about each one. He answered to the best of his ability, although his knowledge of the culinary arts was minimal at best. “I think I recognized most of these things from a pretty common stew served on festival days,” he said. 

“You _think?_ ”

“Well, they sort of look and taste totally different when the sauces and spices and stuff are added...”

Wonderful. Well, they’d have to just make do. “Can you identify the spices?” she asked, handing him a small bag full of colorful jars. “If it’s a stew, I’ll go get the water.” And she promptly did so, trotting down the path to the old well just outside the beachhouse. 

Bending the large bubble of fresh water back to camp was easy. She returned just in time to see Zuko withdrawing his nose from a bright red jar, and sneezing so violently several sparks lit up the air in front of his face. “Not that one,” he muttered to her with a groan, rubbing his nose. “Always hated that one.”

In the end he set aside three jars that he thought were relatively familiar, and managed to identify several vegetables that might be the correct ones as well. There was meat in the dish too, but he _thought_ he’d seen the palace cooks add it separately to the stew just before serving, which meant they could do the same and separate a smaller portion for Aang first. 

Slicing the vegetables turned out to be a task Zuko was surprisingly skilled at—or maybe not so surprisingly, considering his skill with those dual swords. They had even managed to cobble together a broth made from certain peppers that Zuko declared ‘familiar enough.’ This was definitely going much better than expected.

So of course something had to go wrong, and it happened when they started with the spices. She added the three in carefully measured quantities, but after forcing Zuko to taste-test it he declared, “Too bland.” Another different balance had him insisting that it was “too hot, now,” while a third to counteract the mixture had him nearly gagging as he hissed, “Ugh, what did you do? Now it tastes _sour._ ”

“I’d like to see you do better!” Katara hissed in exasperation, and reached for one of the approved spices to try and counteract her latest attempt. Unfortunately, she’d been gesturing at him in frustration with one hand while stirring via waterbending with her other hand, and accidentally knocked the jar into the concoction. She yelped in surprise and dragged the little jar out of the stew before it could sink too far, but not without losing its entire contents to the broth.

“I don’t think that will work,” Zuko observed after a moment, watching the little grains dissolve into the stew. 

“Darn it,” Katara said. She didn’t want to throw the whole batch out—they weren’t exactly rich, and most of their supplies from the market were already in it. 

She stirred the liquid more vigorously with her bending and said hopefully, “Maybe that got rid of the sourness? Here, try it.” Before he could protest, she bent a bubble of the stew’s contents into his mouth. 

His right eye widened and watered immediately as the stew hit his tongue, and even his permanently scowling left eye, normally so limited in movement, attempted to do the same. He gagged almost immediately, before swallowing the stew sample with obvious difficulty. His face was red, and before she could ask he started coughing so hard that flames came shooting out of his mouth and nose, turning the courtyard cobbles nearby completely black in seconds. Thankfully, he at least turned his face away from her first.

Surprised, Katara hastily drew out her bending water and siphoned it through the air to her coughing companion. He drank it gratefully.

“Hot!” he managed to rasp, after he finally recovered, waving one of his hands at his mouth like a fan. “Way, _way_ too hot.” He paused, smacked his tongue a few times, and then said with disgust, “Was that your _bending_ water?”

“I didn’t have anything else, okay!” Katara said. “Sorry.” He didn’t look happy about it, which was a more familiar expression than she’d like, but at least he knew better than to say anything.

Very reasonably, they paused in their cooking long enough to bring another pot of water up from the well for future emergencies. Especially since Zuko kept coughing and sneezing sparks, after that disastrous taste-test, and the last thing they needed was for him to set the house on fire _accidentally._

After that, Katara decided to venture into the pile of non-approved spices, testing them carefully herself to see if she could counteract the _extreme_ spiciness of their concoction in a different way. She made several more attempts to change the flavor, with Zuko strong-armed into taste-testing each new variety of the concoction. Most of these had been unsuccessful, and he had on at least one occasion dunked his entire head into the water-pot as the stew became too spicy and he’d literally spat flames again. By the end of the experiment he became extremely dubious and highly uneasy whenever she offered him the latest version to try. 

But at last they seemed to find the right blend of spices—or at any rate “it’s not quite right, but close enough” according to Zuko—and Katara nodded with triumph. 

“Good. We’ll let that simmer a little longer and start roasting the meat separate. You can keep up two fires, right?” 

He gave her a deadpan, insulted stare, which she chose to interpret as a ‘yes _._ ’ So within no time at all Katara was roasting the meat—some kind of sea slug—on a second cheery fire, catching the juices in a pan to add to the stew for enhanced flavor after Aang got his share.

Alas, things were not to work out entirely to their advantage just yet, and Katara should have known it. Between the dusty spices and the too-hot taste testing attempts, Zuko had been sneezing and coughing something awful for at least half an hour. The sneezes had mostly died down when they’d finished figuring out the stew, but without warning he was assaulted with a sudden fit of them, spitting out more bright embers in the process. 

His concentration on the two cooking fires wavered, and with several sparking pops both of them flared unexpectedly, sending out showers of twirling flames. Katara yelped in surprise as the roasting-fire spat embers at her face and hastily backpedaled, but she’d forgotten the cooking pot was behind her, and kicked it over with the back of her heel. 

Too late she’d realized what happened, and whirled around. Not her stew, not after all the hard work she and Zuko had put into it! One hand was still clutching the pan of roasting-juices, but the other worked quickly, bending the water in the stew and catching it _just_ before it hit the cobblestones. An expert flick of her fingers solidified it enough that they wouldn’t lose the vegetables, grains, or spices, either.

Then she was tipping forward towards the overturned pot, off balance from her earlier stumble. The stew hovered dangerously in the air, ready to splash down on her and everything else the moment she hit the dirt and lost the position of her wrist and fingers for her waterbending form. 

Zuko’s arm shot out and gripped the back of her shirt just in time, preventing her from crashing to the cobblestones and dropping their dinner. He was still sneezing violently, but thankfully with his head turned away, so he didn’t inadvertently set her hair on fire. 

There was a long moment of silence while they tried to recover their senses. Zuko held her up by the back of her shirt, still facing away and sneezing like crazy. She hovered the stew she’d manage to salvage in the air with one hand, gripped a pot of roasting-juices in the other, and hung awkwardly from his grip like a badger-cat carried by its scruff. 

She definitely hadn’t signed up for this level of crazy when she’d decided to recruit Zuko for cooking duty. 

But after a moment, his sneezing subsided, and he pulled her upright away from the fires. She held the stew steady while he gingerly set the still-hot cooking pot back upright, and carefully poured the hard-earned contents back inside with a careful wrist flick. 

They both stared at it for a moment. Then Zuko said dryly, “Cooking dinner with you is more exhausting than an entire day of firebending training.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed.

* * *

Zuko was relieved when dinner was served half an hour later, because it meant they were _finally_ done. Everyone seemed satisfied with the meal, and nobody knew just how much trouble had gone into it. Except maybe Toph, who grinned ear to ear in amusement the whole time they ate.

The boys _did_ seem to pick up on Zuko’s exhaustion, though. He didn’t talk much at dinner, and was wary of the dish even after everyone else had declared it delicious. He knew the final taste test had been fine, but he still took hesitant sips like he expected it to bite him. 

He thought he’d been subtle, but based on the others’ looks, it must not have been subtle enough. When Katara left their dining circle to go refill her bowl, Sokka leaned over and asked sympathetically, “That bad, huh?” 

“If I had known your sister was that sadistic,” Zuko said, “I think I would have stopped chasing you guys a _long_ time ago. No honor was worth that.” 

Sokka and Aang both whistled. “Who knew we could’ve gotten you to stop chasing me a long time ago if we just invited you over for dinner,” Aang said, grinning.

Zuko grumbled.

Sokka grinned at him. “Bet you kinda wish you hadn’t made up with her now, huh?”

Zuko opened his mouth to insist that no, it had still absolutely been worth it. He _wanted_ the respect of everyone here, even if it did cause him difficulties sometimes. Besides, he had a lot to make up for, and if cooking with Katara today was the way he paid his penance, so be it.

But at that moment Katara rejoined the group with seconds on the stew, smiling triumphantly. “It took a little work, but I think it was worth it in the end,” she said to the fire nation prince, as she sipped from her bowl. “And we learned a lot today, so tomorrow should go a _lot_ easier, I think.”

“Tomorrow?” Zuko said, with dawning horror.

She nodded with a cheerful smile. “Well, of course! You were very helpful today, and it was nice to have somebody to experiment with. I bet there are a ton more Fire Nation recipes we can still duplicate, too. I definitely couldn’t have made this one without you.”

The rest of the gang, even Suki, snickered at Zuko’s wide-eyed expression of horror. Only Katara seemed oblivious. After a moment, the fire prince groaned, “Sokka. You might be right. Just a little bit.”

Sokka just laughed.


End file.
